|
Kai Tave posted:Let's be real here though, for every Frank Trollman there's an equal and opposite grog out there complaining about entitled players and jerking off to stuff like Tucker's Kobolds. Right. Trollman taking his "player empowerment via rules" mentality to 11 leads down rabbit holes of unplayability, but I can empathize with the general concept, since it's probably a reaction to the far more common practice of "gotcha" DMs raised on old-school D&D.
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 16:16
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 21:43 |
|
|
Kai Tave posted:"Magic has to be more powerful than everything else, because" is a premise that should always be viewed with the utmost suspicion imo, unless you're talking about a game where being powerful rear end in a top hat wizards is the main driving point (Mage, Ars Magica). There's a reason why a lot of the best fantasy fiction severely limits what magic users can do, either by making them highly specialized or by emphasizing how much time and difficulty goes into spells that still have nasty consequences (like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell). The weird insistence among some RPG communities that magic must be capable of anything because otherwise it isn't magic is just D&D-induced myopia.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 16:31
|
|
|
Yeah, one of the interesting notes I saw when diving back into Fantasy Craft is the fact that Spellbound was supposed to have different magic classes for different subsets of the magic school / category thing they have going. (Two or three of these were published as a preview.) And one of the writers pointed out that actually fits better for Fantasy Craft to not have the ur-mage that's in the corebook, and that they wish they'd done it that way all along.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 17:44
|
|
|
Harrow posted:There's a reason why a lot of the best fantasy fiction severely limits what magic users can do, either by making them highly specialized or by emphasizing how much time and difficulty goes into spells that still have nasty consequences (like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell). Hell, it's not even true in the fiction of D&D. Pretty much every story with Elminster in it is about the limits and follies of magic.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 18:21
|
|
|
Harrow posted:There's a reason why a lot of the best fantasy fiction severely limits what magic users can do, either by making them highly specialized or by emphasizing how much time and difficulty goes into spells that still have nasty consequences (like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell). I always found that strange because when played as RAW outside of 3.x magic was pretty drat limited. Some spells could only be cast at certain times of day or night or under specific weather conditions, other spells had material components that were hard to get or were just plain expensive (and this was before treasure by level), but no, let's just handwave all those away because the Wizard must be All-powerful.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 18:33
|
|
|
I always think about an alternate D&D campaign where the ceiling for what magic can do is far lower and maybe mages and rogues are the same class. Maybe Knock is a really good spell. Maybe the state of the magical art is just really primitive.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 21:50
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:I always think about an alternate D&D campaign where the ceiling for what magic can do is far lower and maybe mages and rogues are the same class. Maybe Knock is a really good spell. Maybe the state of the magical art is just really primitive. You could probably get some pretty decent mileage out of a setting / system where all magic is basically calling in favors from spirits, and getting spirits to owe you a favor is a huge ordeal.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 22:05
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:You could probably get some pretty decent mileage out of a setting / system where all magic is basically calling in favors from spirits, and getting spirits to owe you a favor is a huge ordeal. So Werewolf the Forsaken?
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 22:06
|
|
|
Arivia posted:So Werewolf the Forsaken? Yeah, pretty much, although in Werewolf everyone is both a combat machine and at least nominally capable of spirit dealings.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 22:07
|
|
|
I love the spirit dealings flavour of magic. It feels like proper occultism rather than D&D's highly mechanical approach. The other day I had a situation in my game where the party was beset by evil spirits, and the sorcerer wanted to intimidate them into leaving. Because it was a published adventure my first impulse was to follow what it said and say, sorry, Arcana or Religion only, feel free to reflavour, but fortunately I caught myself and realized that it literally does not get any more sorcerous than out-scaring the evil spirits using your force of personality.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 22:12
|
|
|
Kwyndig posted:I always found that strange because when played as RAW outside of 3.x magic was pretty drat limited. Some spells could only be cast at certain times of day or night or under specific weather conditions, other spells had material components that were hard to get or were just plain expensive (and this was before treasure by level), but no, let's just handwave all those away because the Wizard must be All-powerful. The biggest problem, as I see it, is that while prior to 3rd edition magic in D&D had more limitations, a lot of those limitations were increasingly viewed by players and even GMs as cumbersome, tedious, or simply not very enjoyable, and were often quietly houseruled or shuffled off to the side, and then in 3E they removed or blunted a lot of those restrictions as well as opening things up even more but then failed to sit down and actually reassess what that meant. Being made to randomly roll which spells you get, or roll to see if you could even learn a spell, having to laboriously keep track of each gram of bat poo poo and corpse dust in your pouch, a lot of these are limitations but imo they're limitations that work much better in the context of roguelike since A). the entire point of something like that is seeing how far you can push things with the lovely hand you're dealt before you die and B). you have a computer to handle all the busywork. So before long what you wound up with in 3.X was a situation where the only significant limiter for magic was "well a wizard can't literally cast infinite spells in a 24 hour period" which of course simply means that the Standard Adventuring Day suddenly became based primarily around how much juice your party's spellcasters have left in the tank. I personally wouldn't say that the limitations of prior editions were all that great a concept myself to be honest, for one thing I'm not a fan of tedious accounting as a limitation when it comes to tabletop RPGs whether it's tracking individual arrows or individual doses of material components, and for another thing I don't find the "Vancian spellcasting" balance model where spells (or some other unevenly distributed resource) are generally more powerful than anything else which is supposedly balanced by limited uses per day to have ever been pulled off in a satisfying and effective fashion. This sort of thing invariably seems to lead to perverse incentives while also muddying the waters with dumb arguments like the whole "well a fighter can swing a sword as many times as he wants!," it trains people to look at the wrong things when it comes to examining design and balance.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 22:18
|
|
|
Zurui posted:On this forum? On the YCS offsite
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 00:00
|
|
|
Some of you guys may find this usefulquote:A message from White Wolf via DriveThruRPG.com
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 01:58
|
|
|
Yeah pity WW employs Zak S so doing anything for them is ethically wrong.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 02:25
|
|
|
Helical Nightmares posted:Some of you guys may find this useful Here's the fine print: quote:The Storytellers Vault is a program that allows you to create content (adventures, city or regional supplements, splatbooks, fiction; new powers and character types; backgrounds; character sheets, artwork, etc.) using White Wolf intellectual property (IP) and to make some money while you’re at it. Also there's this tidbit: quote:If I use content from other Storytellers Vault authors, do I need to credit them? So yeah, have fun with that.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 02:28
|
|
|
Fuego Fish posted:Yeah pity WW employs Zak S so doing anything for them is ethically wrong. motherfucker's still sock-puppeting harassment of people he doesn't like through 4chan
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 02:30
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:Here's the fine print: So basically the amount of useful content that's going to come out of this will be almost nil then correct?
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 02:33
|
|
|
So it's ONLY Vampire and no historical settings either. That is very disappointing. They should include citing sources, that's bullshit. Edit: How is this different than the Star Wars Extended Universe licence? Helical Nightmares fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Aug 14, 2017 |
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 02:36
|
|
|
Since the gay spartan cosplayers were for the dumb nuvamp playtest, does that mean they can't be referenced? Because the one redeeming thing I could see to all this would be if some enterprising individuals published a whole set of supplements about gay spartan cosplayers rampaging around everywhere in the vampire setting, having gay spartan cosplayer special stats, and some elaborate gay spartan cosplayer backstory.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 03:21
|
|
|
Desiden posted:elaborate gay spartan cosplayer backstory.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 04:50
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:motherfucker's still sock-puppeting harassment of people he doesn't like through 4chan He moved on to 4chan? Surprised he hasn't ended up on 8chan yet.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 06:19
|
|
|
Helical Nightmares posted:So it's ONLY Vampire and no historical settings either. That is very disappointing. It's pretty reasonable to roll this kind of thing out in stages, and it was explained by someone on RPGnet that's exactly what they're doing. I'm still a little bit dubious about this myself, though, because the resources they're providing aren't curated well at all. They are literally slapping default-pathed InDesign folders into a ZIP and calling it good, resulting in duplicated files of substantial size. Except sometimes they also collect fonts and put them in a RAR inside the ZIP, some of which are again duplicates. The first edition art pack is literally just images with names of "001.jpg" on up to 100, with maybe some gaps and also 131 for some reason. The third edition art pack at least has named files, but they're sometimes not very descriptive. And they have .dropbox extension files sitting in them. It's possible they asked an art director or three to collect all this poo poo without any further instruction, and then whatever they got sent they just slapped up on DTRPG. The clanbook template for third edition is almost 700MB. I place even odds on the size being attributable to something like an 40MB background image duplicated 13 times. I haven't been able to download it, or the other 700MB file which is more understandably an art pack, because DTRPG frequently has bandwidth problems, and with files of this size and popularity their servers have been poo poo the past couple of days. quote:They should include citing sources, that's bullshit. That's not the whole thing, but it is pretty lovely that their guidelines for attribution are "Please do, if you feel like it." It looks like this is the same across the community content platforms. Here's an interesting difference, though: 7th Sea Explorer's Society: Does the Publisher own any unique IP that I create in my Community Content Program publications? posted:The publisher does not own any of the unique IP that you create in your publications. The publisher does own the IP that they contribute, plus the Community Content Program agreement will grant the publisher and other Community Content Creators a license to use your IP. Storytellers Vault: Does White Wolf own the content that I create in my Storytellers Vault publications? posted:Content creators are not allowed to create new IPs under the Storytellers Vault program, rather every piece of content created uses the White Wolf IP. That said, if your work merits incorporation into canon, White Wolf will contact you. That's a bold stance to take, White Wolf: Nothing original or new allowed on the Storytellers Vault. quote:Edit: How is this different than the Star Wars Extended Universe licence? Uh, I don't think that's a community content thing?
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 06:36
|
|
|
Unless they're referring to a license I'm not aware of, Star Wars has always been work for hire contracts as far as authors and artists are concerned. If you don't have a contract, you're making fanworks, which may be infringing upon Star Wars IP and while they're usually fine with not for profit fan work, that isn't always the case. In either instance the current holders of the Star Wars RPG license aren't doing a community content program at present and it's highly likely they wouldn't be permitted to by Disney.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 19:20
|
|
|
Kwyndig posted:In either instance the current holders of the Star Wars RPG license aren't doing a community content program at present and it's highly likely they wouldn't be permitted to by Disney. That would be Fantasy Flight, and no they aren't. In fact they can't because part of their license agreement with Disney (I've seen some sources that say the arrangement predates the Disney buyout and might have originated with Lucasarts) essentially forbids them from selling anything that constitutes a "digital game" which also includes pdfs, as Electronic Arts currently has exclusive rights to produce digital Star Wars game content. This is why you can't find pdfs of FFG's Star Wars line for sale. Any community content program that involved monetizing things in any way would therefore have to be hardcopy only in order to avoid violating that agreement, and there's less than zero chance that FFG is interested in footing the bill for a big book of uncurated homebrew. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Aug 14, 2017 |
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 19:32
|
|
|
So, apparently the next wave of 7th Sea will get previewed at GenCon, with a PDF of the Kickstart being available the week after, and the kickstarter in September. It's time for Not-L5R, as they spoiled three of the nations in the "Khitani Quickstart" Fuso: A powerful island nation devoted to military might and domination, Fuso’s samurai are some of the most feared warriors in the East. But a nation completely devoted to warfare can never be at peace, and Fuso stands on the brink of ascension to the power—if anyone can agree who ought to be in charge. Agnivarsan Empire: Also known as the Land of 10,000 Gods, Agnivarsa was once ruled by the Crescent Empire, but won its independence long ago. It is a fertile, dense land made of tiny kingdoms, struggling to hold together among a dozen different courts and mysterious dense jungles. The Kiwa Islands: A collection of island nations across the southern Eastern Sea, the voyagers of Kiwa race to explore and claim islands, newly appearing all across the ocean. Whoever controls the most land decides the fate of the kingdoms of Kiwa, their people and the future. But the monsters rising from below the sea endanger every seafarer in the Islands, and perhaps all of Khitai itself. So Not-Japan, Not-India, Not-Polynesia.. and...
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 15:20
|
|
|
I'm like two pages late to the Gamma World discussion but man that game rules so much and I'm so glad I was able to find an affordable mint box through German Amazon. I'll be getting Famine In Far-Go and Golden Legion later this year. Also I hate all of you American scum for the fact that you can actually get those print on demand cards from DriveThruRPG afforadbly, they don't have a card printer in Europe yet so I'd have to pay 20$ extra just for shipping which feels a bit excessive, but maybe once I'm flush I'll get them.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 17:01
|
|
|
SirFozzie posted:So, apparently the next wave of 7th Sea will get previewed at GenCon, with a PDF of the Kickstart being available the week after, and the kickstarter in September. I still need to play 7th Sea. . .
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 17:22
|
|
|
hyphz posted:Oh, ok. It seems there that his argument is not so much "driving a car is overpowered compared to magic" but that "mages have to be much more powerful in modern settings than fantasy ones, because things that require magic in fantasy settings can be done relatively easily with technology in modern ones." ProfessorCirno posted:Trollman's whole thing boils down to his belief that all GMs are bastard evil GM types, and that the rules of a game exist to protect you from the GM's sinister plottings. The rules have to be as complete and close to the laws of physics of the setting as possible in order to give you the most leeway in defeating the GM and his attempts to control you. So like, a common complaint from his forums in 4e was that enemy rules were different from PC rules so you could no longer metagame (metagaming isn't just good to Trollman, it is a flat out necessary component in the war against the GM), and the literal example was "in 3.x if a tower just appears overnight I can use spellcraft and other skills and then look up spells to determine exactly how it was raised and when and all of it's details, but in 4e, all I can do is go inside and explore it!" Ferrinus posted:4E monsters do work like PCs... it's just that the inner workings of their character sheets are abstracted and they benefit from arbitrary ends-based custom powers generally assumed to be innate powers based on their origin. So for example there is no specific feat which grants a balor the ability to shoot fireballs at-will and if a tower appears overnight it could have been the work of a god or a superintelligent ant colony or a temporal paradox or, hell, a custom-designed magic spell made up by the DM that's the equivalent of a spell or feat in an as yet unreleased game supplement.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 18:06
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I remember being involved in that argument. In Trollman's mind, if there is a magically-created castle, there needs to be a Butthead's Beatific Battlements spell that you can look up, and backsolve the caster's level from the square footage of stone created, and so on. To just make poo poo up is a tyranny perpetrated upon your poor PCs.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 18:08
|
|
|
Promoting adversarial play in a system rigorous enough to support it is a good thing even if those specific examples are insane. (Which is to say, instead of checking player skill they're game knowledge checks of completely inane details.)
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 18:16
|
|
|
Evil Mastermind posted:Was that the topic that spawned the phrase "Magical Tea Party"? that's the term his pet forum uses to describe any interaction that isn't bounded by and resolved within the rules, it's much older than that conversation.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 18:20
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:that's the term his pet forum uses to describe any interaction that isn't bounded by and resolved within the rules, it's much older than that conversation. I know they're responsible for the phrase, I just couldn't remember if it came from that example specifically. fake edit: poo poo I found my Trollman quotes file...why do I still have this?
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 18:27
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I remember being involved in that argument. In Trollman's mind, if there is a magically-created castle, there needs to be a Butthead's Beatific Battlements spell that you can look up, and backsolve the caster's level from the square footage of stone created, and so on. To just make poo poo up is a tyranny perpetrated upon your poor PCs. "Mr. Trollman, show me on the doll where the DM touched you."
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 18:28
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I remember being involved in that argument. In Trollman's mind, if there is a magically-created castle, there needs to be a Butthead's Beatific Battlements spell that you can look up, and backsolve the caster's level from the square footage of stone created, and so on. To just make poo poo up is a tyranny perpetrated upon your poor PCs. God, poo poo like this makes me miss grogs.txt because I would love to read some of these posts but am too lazy to go find them myself.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 18:35
|
|
|
the goon fantasy version of gaming den, built up from years of playing telephone and embroidering half-remembered stories, is a lot more interesting than the actual thing anyway
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 18:39
|
|
|
Evil Mastermind posted:I know they're responsible for the phrase, I just couldn't remember if it came from that example specifically. Some day, brother, we will be free of these foreign mods and the grog mines will reopen.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 18:58
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:the goon fantasy version of gaming den, built up from years of playing telephone and embroidering half-remembered stories, is a lot more interesting than the actual thing anyway
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 19:02
|
|
|
LongDarkNight posted:Some day, brother, we will be free of these foreign mods and the grog mines will reopen.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 19:12
|
|
|
Evil Mastermind posted:God I hope not. I would rather not as well, as a reminder, that Mock Threads are bad.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 19:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 21:43 |
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:This reminds me of how Reign explicitly says "There's no magic spell to just shoot a magic arrow at someone, because there are already archers. People use magic to do stuff that's impossible without magic." That's retarded
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 19:20
|
|